Month: February 2008

Further to my previous post, I believe I cracked the conundrum attached to e-invoicing today! Now, do not get too excited, as I have not decided whether I am going to do anything about it. Most likely, I will park it for the time being. But let’s explore what the problem is in the first place. What is the biggest problem faced by the e-invoicing (EIPP) market? I argue that at the very top is the lack of market penetration. Paper documents continue to rule. Some of these are now replaced by e-mail attachments, but this does not solve the…

Let me first clarify what I meant by e-invoicing here. It is not about scanning and OCRing paper invoices with tight integration of accounts payable systems. It is about connecting disparate finance and procurement systems seamlessly, so that an electronic document (purchase-to-payment and supply-to-cash) from one system flows automatically to another system owned by the same or separate organisation without duplication of effort. At its very basic level, avoiding retyping of data created by the originating system. In my mind, you can only achieve this through a electronic document exchange hub. A prime example is OB10 (in the case of…

Currently, I am inspired by two individuals: Rhys Jones of Accountis, sanoodi and edocr I like his concept of having a pipeline of companies. His sweet spot is in setting up and nurturing a startup to revenue generation. He acknowledges that others are better experienced to turn these startups in to high growth companies. He has so far exited from two companies successfully. With number of other startups under his belt, his game now is to accelerate this process. Whilst I cannot demonstrate the same level of success, I have now setup three complementary businesses; edocr (document interactivity platform), eveo…

It has become very easy to setup a legal entity, and I thought of sharing some of the activities you need to undertake if you are thinking of starting a business. Here goes: Decide on company name. Check companies house to ensure the availability of the company name. Make sure the URL is available. Register the company – I used Company4less, which costs £20 Register the URL – I used 123reg Register for VAT – takes about a month Open bank account – takes an hour with HSBC – it helps if they know you Find an accountant – this…

I created evigon with two thoughts in mind, these being: Provide a vehicle for my advisory and consultancy activities Allow other services to be provided through a flexible entity It is very early days to write too much about evigon, but I hope I will have some news to share shortly. Until then… Technorati Tags: evigon

ebdex was formed on 25th Nov 2004 with the idea of disrupting the EIPP market dominated by Accountis and OB10. To be fair, OB10 and Accountis had very low market penetration then (and same is true now). But they were the best examples an ambitious startup could look upon. Causeway’s Tradex and Burns e-Commerce’s Bex were ignored due to various reasons. Number of other models were studied including Ariba, Xign, Harbour Payments, Esker, etc. At the time, the idea was to develop a product that harnessed the best of Accountis and OB10. The key ingredient taken from OB10 was the…

As you very well know, I have been running events for the Digital StartUp Community in the North of England for over 15 months. Whilst these events hardly make any commercial sense, I am convinced that they can grow to become a worth while business over time. In order to achieve this, the business of running events need to be released from the current chaotic environment. With this in mind, some of my network buddies and I have come together to create a new venture, eveo Ltd. I will write more about this later on. Technorati Tags: Events, Seminars, Exhibitions,…

edocr plans to attend the StartUp Camp on 7th and 8th March sponsored by Sun Microsystems, and co-hosted by: This is our first time at a StartUp Camp. According to event organisers: “Startup Camp is an unconference which means you get to decide what the session content is. If you’re thinking of coming to Startup Camp London and want to suggest some discussion topics, you’re welcome to list them on a special page that we’ve set aside on the wiki for such discussion proposals” So far, over 130 individuals have registered for the event. Some of these include Northerners: Katie…

The next Northern StartUp 2.0 event is almost upon us. This time bringing the North’s premier telecommunications community together for one evening. Held one week after 3GSM Barcelona, the event aims to update the progress made within the last year and debate on the forthcoming technologies. Without further ado, here is the introduction from Imran Ali, ex-Deputy to Strategy Director of Orange: Introduction The umbrella term Web 2.0 provided a helpful framework for understanding various intersecting and overlapping trends, business models and design patterns across the internet industry. Despite the exponential growth of mobile communication and computing, Mobile 2.0 doesn’t…